Fake Anastasias

Anastasia Romanov inspired a play, an Academy Award-winning movie, and a Dana-and-Lizzie-loving animated feature. But the legend of the missing princess is stranger and more involved than a movie with a talking bat might have led you to believe.

SOURCES:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/february-6/anastasia-arrives-in-the-united-states
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-fresh-dna-authenticate-bones-russia.html
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19600212&id=tuUlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EncDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7046,629353&hl=en
https://www.nytimes.com/1958/08/24/archives/anastasia-grand-duchess-or-grand-hoax-the-last-act-in-the-drama-of.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20250331152750/http://www.readthehook.net/86004/cover-jack-amp-anna-remembering-czar-charlottesville-eccentricshttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68616
https://blog.newspapers.com/anna-anastasia-anderson/
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/grondahl-anastasia-or-imposter-local-author-12950650.php

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Folks, it's a hug.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
No one have seen wet us.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
To see you there.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish we're.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
True and truths that sound like lies.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm the ghost of Danish.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Schwartz and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Welcome to the show. This is very much a hoax
that is about lies we wish we're true.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Great, and you said something funny right before we started.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
I said, this is going to be a light and
funny episode. There's only five instances of child.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Murder, barely barely.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Any child murder. But let's flag that if you are
just very sensitive to the murder of historical figures who
were children.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Oh, I know what this is. Yeah, No, so I
know what this is.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, well let's just dive in. Lizzie. Have you seen
the blue movie Anastasia? People always think it's a Disney
movie Fox Disney did by Fox, so technically it is
now a Disney movie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
And I think we did we or did we not
talk about it on a bonus episode of Noble Blood.
We maybe have this is so I think we've talked
about it.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
I love this topic. Yes, and I'm very grateful to
Hoax because the thing is on Noble Blood. I talk
about real history, yeah, and this episode is giving me
a very fun opportunity to talk about some not real history.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yes, and I think this is one of those like
this is just like such data shit because not only
is it real history, fake history, animation history, like all
of those things, it's also one of your pet pet

(01:56):
peeves in such a way that you love it because
you get to talk about how it's your pet, which
is people making what they think is a really smart
point that's actually not a smart point, which is people
popping onto the internet to be like it's so funny
in the movie Anastasia how they like totally leave out
the communism part, Like did you realize that that whole

(02:19):
opening is like historically inactionate, I'm it's like, ah, it's like,
oh yeah, did you realize that that movie about Restputant
being a wizard and there's a talking bat is historically inaccurate?
Like this is not the this is not the gatcha you.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Think it is? Internet? Yes, I love a fake gotcha.
Someone like feeling really smug and really smart, someone being like, hmm,
actually Frankenstein is the scientist.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, it's like this movie has like Hankhazaria voicing a
bat like no one thinks this is a documentary if you.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Have not realized already we are going to be talking
about Anastasia or really fake hoax to Anastesia, the legacy
of the legacy of Antsia. Yeah, because on Noble Blood
at different points I have talked about the real history
and life of Anastasia, but I thought this podcast specifically
would be a very fun opportunity to go into detail

(03:10):
about the century of Anastesia related hoax that happened after
spoiler alert Anastasia's death not a spoiler alert for most people,
I think to know that Anastesia is in fact.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Dead well ye and died with at the same time
as the rest of her family. Yes, so that said
Annestsia Romanov to be specific.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
To be specific, the daughter the youngest daughter of the
Czar Nicholas the second So for a little bit of
historical context, just to set the scene. If you are
new to the story or have only seen the animated
movie featuring the voice of Meg Ryan and She's not
even a Russian. That's my fake Internet correct evils.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, it's her. It's John Cusa, John You Sach, Kelsey Grammer,
Hank is Area.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I think Jim Cumming.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
I think Jim Cumming is disputant, and I want to
say it's not. Is it Julie Andrews? Is Is it Julian?
And then Bernadette Peters.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Bernette Peters is definitely Sophie. Oh no, Christopher Lloyd is resputant.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, but it's the singing voices are all different, so
that's why you thought of Jim coming. I think it's
Liz Callaway, Liz callow singing voice, Kristin Dunst Isastasia on.
Lacey Schebert is the singing voice for Youngionastasia s, Gretchen
Wieners herself, Yeah, Christopher Lloyd, Jim Cummings singing voice, Angela
Lansberry as her grandmother, I Dowager empress, and Bernaedette Peters,

(04:46):
Sophie Sophie. Okay, great, I mean an all star cast.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Everyone should.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Can you imagine the things I would know if this
weren't the things that I know?

Speaker 1 (04:55):
But thank god you do.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
I could be a lawyer, but you.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Shouldn't be I could pass the bar. I hope you don't.
Andrea Martin plays multiple roles as an old woman at
train station. Yeah, the orphanage's inconsiderate owner.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, great, Well historically not in the animated movie, The
Russian Revolution happens in nineteen seventeen, not for magic reasons.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
No, Zar Nicholas.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
He was unpopular for a lot of reasons. For a
long time. He was known as Bloody Nicholas because there
was an incident about a decade before this when people
were bringing a petition to the palace and his soldiers
fired on innocent protesters, and so he was called Bloody Nicholas,
very unpopular. He abdicates the throne. He and his family

(05:44):
is put under house arrest quote unquote for their own safety. First,
in Siberia, the Bolsheviks come to power after the October Revolution,
and the Romana family is moved to a house in
Yekatrinberg near the Ural Mountains. And what's happening at this time,
and again we're just skating over this for background context.
There's still a civil war happening in Russia at the time,

(06:05):
so there's the Bolsheviks, who are known sort of as
the Reds, and then there's the anti Bolsheviks that is
kind of called the White Army. So if I say
the whites, I don't mean white people, although they are,
but I mean the Tsarist anti Bolsheviks. The family at
this time is Nicholas the second y Czar of Russia,
his wife Alexandra, who's a German princess and the granddaughter

(06:26):
of Queen Victoria, and their four daughters and one son.
So in terms of like the English connection, Alexandra is
the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Nicholas's mom is married
to the grandson of Queen Victoria, so they're not actually related.

(06:48):
They're related by marriage but not by blood. His mom, Dagmar,
was a Danish princess and her sister, a different Danish princess,
married the King of.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
England, and so this is how they're going to try
and get asylum in Britain. But that's not going to work.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
I mean, that just does not happen. It's like a
very interesting historical like what if. And it's one of
my favorite episodes of Noble Blood because Nicholas the Second
was first cousins with the king of England at this time,
and they looked like twins, like they looked like brothers,
and they were very close. But the Romanovs are so
unpopular that it just is not a politically feasible move

(07:30):
to offer them asylum. And it actually breaks George the
Fifth's heart when he hears about what happens to the Romanovs.
He is very depressing. I think scary if you're a
monarch and you hear about this sort of thing happening
to other monarchs. But on a personal note, this is
like a real situation where it was like putting the
crown over family because he's like, well, if I bring

(07:52):
them here to England, even if I try, And then
there's a whole additional question about even if he tried,
whether he could have. But it's like if he tries,
maybe they would be a revolt in England and they
would overthrow them monarchy.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, crazy, crazy, Okay.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
So Nicholas the second, Zari Alexandra, and their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria,
and little Anastasia. The daughters are twenty two to seventeen
and the heir, the youngest son, Alexei, is thirteen. This
family is in this terrible house in Youkatrinberg. The conditions
keep getting worse and worse. There's like paper over the

(08:27):
windows because the Bolsheviks don't want anyone to see them there.
They're forre been from communicating with the outside world. There's
just like more and more soldiers. It feels like they're
in prison. There's also four servants with them, but like
also imprisoned with them or not, like to take care
of them. There's still a revolution happening. So the white

(08:47):
anti Bolshevik forces are marching on into Ukatrinberg. And so
this is a question that is still asked in history,
like history and don't have an answer to this. Who
makes this decision? To this day, like no one has
found any specific orders, and people have said different things

(09:08):
about who was responsible. But what we know is the
White army was marching on Katernberg, they were going to
get there soon, and someone makes a decision. And that
decision is that the Romanovs are woken up in the
middle of the night July seventeenth. They're told to put
on their clothes and get dressed because they're going to
be moved to another safe place. The children we know

(09:33):
put the kid jewels in their undergarments, which is an
important detail. And the family is brought into a semi
basement with their few servants, including their family doctor doctor Botkin,
which will be important later. And while they're waiting in
the cellar, and again they like don't know what's happening,
Like Alexandra asks for a chair, and then someone comes in.

(09:55):
The commandant read a statement saying that they're going to
be Nicholas is going to be executed, and an execution
squad comes in and July nineteenth, two days later, the
Bolsheviks announced that Zar Nicholas was shot, was executed, and
that his family was moved to a secret safe location.

(10:16):
That's sort of what at the time the information that is.
There are a few witnesses that will later say they
saw a train with like blocked out windows, and they're like, yes,
I assume that the Tsarina and the children were on
that train. Two weeks later, the White Army comes and
occupies at Katrinberg and they do like a little investigation
to try to figure out what happens. There's a commission

(10:39):
run by this guy named Sokolov who's trying to investigate
what happens he does not find any of the bodies,
not even the Czar. But he examined this basement where
whatever happened happened, looks at all the blood and the evidence,
and he's like, I think the entire family was killed. Yeah.
He also claims that the execution of the imperial family

(11:02):
was carried out by quote, a group of Latvians led
by a Jew. Yeah, you can tell that from the
blood blood ladder, and I just I actually just want
to be clear, not not true. They actually were all
ethnic Russians. Okay, just that fun fact. But it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
I mean, when has blaming the Jews ever not been
just like a go.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
To Yeah, a Latvians led by a Jew, but he
was incorrect. But he doesn't even get to really finish
his investigation because then the Bolshevik forces return and he
dies of a heart attack, and then even once Soviet
government comes into power, they suppress his report.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
So all of this is to say there is a
ton of disinformation happening, which is just the perfect breeding
ground for conspiracy theories. And on one hand, the Bolsheviks
at this time did not want to tell the world
that they killed the Czar and also his wife and children, right,
makes them look quite bad. It makes them look quite bad.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
And also isn't there I mean there's like precedent for
sparing the family, right, because I'm thinking, correct me if
I'm wrong. Did they kill mari Antoinette's kids?

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Not on purpose? They died in prison.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
But they weren't planning, but they were they weren't executed, right,
And they they sent Napoleon into exile, but his kids.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Were well, he didn't have kids, but his nephews, yeah right, his.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Like the family was taken care of step son, yeah, yeah,
and like other I mean, I don't know off the
top of my head, a ton of executed it is
without precedent. But yeah, so it's like even in bloody revolutions,
like even super no, we got to burn the whole
house down.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
People.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
This is not like a political theory that is like
widely accepted that it's like, ah, well, you know your
party to the oppressors, like you got to be killed too,
Like killing kids is just like a no no for
the human race.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Correct, very bad, which is I mean why they do
not publicize yet there is a civil war happening. They
want support and if you are claiming to be morally superior,
and that the Tzar was a bloody oppressor you don't
want to be like, and we murdered his children in
a way. And this is the trigger warning part. And

(13:22):
I think that like historically I read about things and
now not to be like, no, I have a kid,
so I read, but like it just like in your body,
affects you emotionally, Okay, So if you don't want to
know bloody details, skip ahead like thirty seconds. But what
happened was all these the firing squad in the basement,
all of the people, even though they were signed to

(13:43):
kill different people, they all just wanted to shoot the czar.
Because if you're a soldier, you're like, yeah, I don't
want to shoot a k I want to shoot the czar,
the one I hate. And so they shoot the czar
and then they're screaming and panic and then a lot
of the guns backfire, and then also a lot of
the bullets ricochet off the jewel in their underwear, and
so some of the deaths are like by bayonet at

(14:06):
close range, like this is like a brutal way to die,
and like gun smoke and screaming and and there you
can come back if you don't want descriptions of the
brutal death. So it's it looks really bad. But on
the other hand, they don't want to just outright lie.
The Bolsheviks don't just want to be like, oh, but

(14:27):
the Czarina and children are totally safe. They're fine because
they don't want people for the White Army to rally behind.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, And I also like, presumably they can't keep that
up for very long, like they're not going to go
find them.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
They're not going to find them. They don't exist, and
they don't want anyone to rally behind. So it is
a bad strategy. And it's also why there's so much
conspiracy minded thinking, because if you want to believe these
children are still alive, you're like, well, yeah, of course
they wouldn't say anything because they don't want, you know,

(15:06):
us to have a hero at a rally behind. And
also I've seen the argument it's pretty flimsy that because
Alexandra was a German princess that the Bolsheviks would have
wanted her as like a bargaining chip at the end
of World War One, but the war was coming to
an end, like Russia was out of the war like
that just like doesn't hold a lot of water. But
that's also why to this day we don't know, no

(15:28):
one really has taken responsibility for that order. Yeah, okay, sure,
so that's all the context. Okay, But at the time,
if you're someone alive in nineteen eighteen and you just heard, okay,
they killed.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
The czar rumor in Saint Peter's.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
You've heard of humber in Saint Petersburg, but you're like,
they killed the czar. They said that the queen and
her children went away to safety. Haven't heard much about that.
Maybe they're dead, who knows, Maybe.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
They got knocked on the head and forgot who they were.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
You don't know. Most people, I don't think are things
thinking too much about it until a few years later. Okay,
just nineteen months later, in nineteen twenty, fifteen, hundred miles away,
there's a young woman pulled from a canal in Berlin
after she jumped off trying to commit suicide. Okay, She's
brought to the hospital and then to Daldorf Sanitarium, where

(16:20):
she stays for two years. This woman has no memory
of who she is. She doesn't have a name, and
we've talked a lot about like pretty privilege. Yeah, she's
like a young pretty woman.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Great.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
She appears to be about twenty. She has some scars
on her head and neck and body, suffering from partial amnesia.
Doesn't give her name, so she's kind of checked in
under the German equivalent of like Jane Doe.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
She has well to think what that would be like
Heidi like nine.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
I think it's just like unknown women. It's like even
more boring than that. They sort of see, they try
to mark, like is that a birthmark? Are their moles removed?
She speaks German but with an accent. Okay, they don't
quite know what the accent is. So for two years
she's in this sanitarium. One there's another patient in the

(17:13):
sanitarium who had suffered from a nervous breakdown, and her
name is Clara, and she's reading a magazine and she
she looks up at the woman across from her and
sees that this woman seems to bear a striking resemblance
to Tatiana Romanov. Okay, Tatiana was sort of the beauty
of the family.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
And the striking resemblance is from a photo or a
like an oil painting, a photo there are photos.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah, I know there's photos there. Which one is I'm
going to actually show you some photos. This is some
good timing I have.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Do you have a picture of Jane no name and Tatiana?

Speaker 1 (17:49):
Indeed I do. Okay, So I'm looking at a picture
of the royal family.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
The royal family.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
This is Olga, this is Maria, this is Tatiana the beauty.
That's Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
They're all real pretty, but Tatiana is.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
She's serving face. This is the unknown woman.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Okay, so they don't they don't not look alike. I
don't think they look like the same person necessarily.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
I mean, she's a pretty young woman. Yeah, and this
is you know, there are other pictures of Tatiana. But
that's basically She's like, whoa, this unknown lady looks a
lot like Tatiana. This woman Clara, who had suffered the
nervous breakdown, goes to a pretty connected friend named Baron
Arthur von Kleist, the first Arthur of this episode. She's like,
this lady I met at Doldorf looks a lot like Tatiana.

(18:38):
You got, you know, some some Russian nobles. Maybe they
knew Tatiana, can you? And so he gathers up some
Russian nobles, because if you recall, the Russian Revolution happened,
and so if you were a Russian noble, you got
got the heck out of there. A lot of them
are in Berlin. Some Russian nobles identify her. They're like, whoa,

(18:59):
she does look like someone. I'm not one hundred percent,
but something is happening. People get the idea in her
head that she's not Tatiana, but she is in fact Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
That's so interesting that it wasn't her idea. It was
not originally her idea. Someone all these other sort of
people around her, someone in this circle of Russian expats
is like, that's not Tatiana, that's Anastasia. I mean, to
go from being suicidal to being told that you were
like the lost princess, like I would be like, yep,

(19:36):
haunt that I absolutely I am, and don't ever tell
me of her worlds.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Well, now if you can believe it, now some of
her memory starts coming back. She says that the scars
on her body are from the knives and bayonets of
the Bolsheviks and the massacre, and that what had happened
was she had somehow survived that and passed out, and
one of the soldiers had found her alive after the
carnage and helped her escape to the west. That baron,

(20:03):
Baron Arthur Vunklaist takes her in for a few months
while she kind of is meeting the Russian expat noble community.
She doesn't seem to speak Russian, which you'd imagine Anastasia would,
but so her supporters say that she had a horrible
trauma associated with Russian, so naturally she kind of like

(20:24):
doesn't want to go there. Von Cleiste's daughter testifies that
she is muttering what sounds like Polish in her speed
in her sleep. Some people say that she speaks quite
good English, like Anastasia would have. Some say that she
speaks English a little bit okay. Some say that she
does not speak English. So different people. Our sources on

(20:45):
this are people who met her at the time, and
so some are like, oh, and amazingly, this is Anastasia.
She spoke quite good English, and then some are like,
this is okay. So they just have different memories. People
have different meeting of meeting her, and some people say
that she seems intimately knowledge about Russian court and able
to name faces in photographs and identify uniforms and buildings,

(21:07):
which I'm.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Like getting convinced even though I know that it's not true.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, and she has basically this full story that the
guard who rescued her his name was Alexander Tchaikovsky, that
she had given birth to his child and they had
gotten married. Then he was assassinated.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
That's a lot.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
And then he was assassinated in Bucharest, the infant was
put in a foundling home. She made it to Berlin.
She was trying to find Princess Irene of Prussia, who
would be her aunt, her mom's sister. But then she
was deserted by the person she was traveling with, and
she was so frightened and ashamed that she tried to
commit suicide.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Okay, that's like her story. That's a lot more than
I thought there was gonna be. Yeah, Okay, and because
a lot of that you could maybe verify.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Well, interesting you say that there is no evidence in
dependent evidence of two guards who are she said that
Tchaikovsky brothers had rescued her. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
And also you can see physically if a woman has
given birth.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
I don't know if they're checking that. I think she
actually might have Okay, I think, I mean, actually I
know for a fact she has Okay, but the other
details of her story don't, like, uh, there aren't isn't
like corroborative heart evidence. Okay, But as it turns out
this woman has had a child. They introduce her to
Princess Irene, her aunt. Do you do you have a

(22:32):
guess what Princess Irene thinks. I've never met this woman
in my life. Correct, this is not my niece. I
do not know who this young woman is. But the
German Foreign Office issues an identity card to her as
Anastasia Tchaikovsky Nay Romanov. Wow, I guess they just take
your word for it.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, I mean I feel like, in the absence of
any other identity, the Germans are just like, ah knows,
it's a name. It's a name, because it's not like
they're issuing her like a royal title or any money.
They're just like, it's a first and last name.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Well, so, what's going to happen now at this point
is there are a lot of As we sort of
alluded to early on in the episode, there are a
lot of cousins throughout Europe, both on your mother and
father's side of you are Anastasia, and various distant cousins, uncles,
great uncles will have different opinions on whether or not

(23:29):
she is in fact Anastasia, and some of them think
that she is. So the mother of the Czar, the grandmamma, grandmama,
it's me Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Maria Frederovna is not in Paris. She's in Copenhagen, roces
from and her daughter Olga has the Danish minister in
Berlin look into this story. They hear about her and Ara,
can you look into this? They're in Denmark. They ask
the Danish minister in Berlin to look into this, and

(24:01):
the minister actually pays this woman's bills for.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Three years, okay in this just in case.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Just in case. And in this period she's treated in
a sanitarium in Switzerland and one in Germany. She's sort
of in and out of mental institutions while she's being
funded by Romanov relatives.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I mean, but I mean, it's not like she's really
living the high life. She's like just she's a mentally
ill woman who is getting help. So, yeah, she in nineties.
It seems like a mostly victimless cry.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah. In nineteen twenty seven, the distant cousin, Duke George
of Luckdenburg lets her stay at cassel sillone. Yeah. This
is around the period also where she meets her biggest
lifelong ally who is Gleb Botkin. Gleb Botkin was a

(24:58):
childhood friend of Anna State because he was the son
of their family doctor, right, the doctor who was also
murdered in the massacre.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yes, and he's like, oh my god, I am my
friend Mac.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah. He meets her and is like, this is Anastasia
and I am fully convinced. His sister Tatiana also is
like fully convinced. Okay, he draw Hey, he had drawn
like caricatures with Anastasia as like all the court members
as little characters with animal heads, and he says she
identifies each one.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Cute.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
He's a pretty weird guy. By the fifties, he's leading
a small religious sect in New Jersey.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Ooh, that's like just.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Being aware to a New.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Jersey very years ahead of it.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
But like we're back in the twenties now.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Is this story making the news?

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Oh yeah, like worldwide.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
News, worldwide okay. In fact, as like fraud found or
princess found.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
As like possible princess found okay, not as like woman
claims to be Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Another thing is during this period, more than a dozen
women will come out as Anastesia.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Okay, so kind of based on her where they're like
there's a is it like an anaesthesia gold rush where
they're like, oh, you can claim to be Anastasia or
is it because the the version that I had sort
of like learned in history class was that there was
like something unique about Anastasia's story that made her like

(26:35):
especially susceptible to con artists, where it was like they
never found her body. Well that's why when these people
were coming forward.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
When we get to the eighties, that actually will kind
of be the case.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Okay, but right now it's mostly based on this one
lady who was identified by the Nervous Breakdown lady as Tatiana, and.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Then the people in Berlin were like Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
And then Anasthesia, and then that will have this sort
of ripple effect of other Anastesia want.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Of these we are also going to talk about later
in the episode, other people pretending to be other Romanov daughters.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
I was about to say, like why, like it feels
like we're crowded with Anastasia's Why hasn't anyone else tried
to be like Olga?

Speaker 1 (27:21):
In fact, they do, and we is kind of like
the like saying like Harris, George is my favorite beatle.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
George was a great beat George is a great beatle.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
You could be Olga? Why not? The reason that Anastasia
kind of captures the imagine she was the youngest, She
was the youngest, the sweetest, like very cute. This case
and this woman she has not gotten this name yet
in the story, but she's most commonly referred to as
Anna Anderson. Okay, it becomes a worldwide sensation.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
There's a woman that we've been talking, yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
As we've said, is gets the most publicity. There's a
play about loosely inspired by her. I think it's like
the Amnesia and the suicide attempt, Like there's a very
romantic aspect to it. And there will be a movie
in the fifties with Ingrid Bergmann about this case. Okay,
So the movie in the fifties about this Anastasia sort
of popularizes the missing Anastasia, Princess narrative.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Okay, Okay, I'm sorry, let's go back to your timeline.
I have ten hundred questions.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Okay, yes, but I want to I want to talk
about all of them.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
The movie is about what she claimed happened, where she
gets rescued and has a baby and is a missing
princess or the movie is about her having the play
and the mental hallucination of a fake identity.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
The play and the movie are what the animated movie
is based on. It's about a young woman with amnesia
who opportunists sort of decide to say, like, let's pretend
she's Anastasia, and then it's like, but is she really Anastasia?

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Okay, but I assume without the heart where the Russian
Empire fell because Resputant made a deal with the devil.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yes, no, it is more grounded, no Resputant. Ok It
is like a love story, and it is like con
artists decide to use this pretty woman with amnesia for
their ends, and then it's like, oh, but is she Anastasia?
Who knows?

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (29:18):
And it's a movie that comes out in the fifties
with Ingrid Bergmann.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
I want to watch that, Okay.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
I think she wanted an Oscar for it.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
I hope she did.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
But back in the twenties. Great, this woman is getting
national global attention because she is claiming to be Anastasia,
with a pretty credible group of people supporting her. The
fact that Gleed Botkin was Anastasia's childhood friend, and he's like,
this is my friend Anastasia. You're like, well yeah. The
Grand Duke of Hess, who is Anastasia's uncle, her mom's brother,

(29:51):
does not believe any of this, and he's like, enough
is enough because relatives had kind of been paying for
her way, and he decides to hire a private investigation.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Sorry, I have like I'm interrupting you so much. Who
at any point, I mean, I know that it makes
them look bad, but at any point are the Bolsheviks
going to come out and say like, no, we killed them,
we kill them all?

Speaker 1 (30:15):
No? Okay, No, they will not.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Also, because that order was sort of buried, it's kind
of like a thing that there were no records of. Also,
people will say it, so individual soldiers will come forward
and be like, no, we killed them all. But people
will be like conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
The Grand Duke of Hess hires a private investigator who
investigates and publishes his findings in a newspaper on April ninth,
nineteen twenty seven. And this investigator did a very very
thorough job. He looked through photos and employment records and
missing person reports and figures out that this woman is
actually a woman named Franciska Shanchakowshka, and she was a

(30:56):
Polish factory worker with a history of mental mins stability.
She had a husband who was killed in World War One.
She was injured in a factory explosion in nineteen sixteen,
hence the scars. Her former landlady describes her as a
reader of romantic novels who kept a picture of the
czar's family on the dressing table. And apparently the landlady

(31:19):
was brought to the Bavarian castle where Anna Anderson was
staying at this point, and she screamed get her out
of here. And this is I think very funny because
this is after Princess Caribou, the second time a landlady
is ide a fake.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
Princess, so it's pretty con She's known as Anna Anderson
even though her name is Francesca No.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Anna Anderson is an alias that this fake Anastasia will
is known for now like in history, she calls herself Anastasia, okay,
and all of her well, I'm just calling her Anna
Anderson to you, Lizzie Logan, because that is there's so
many different Anastasia impostors. Anna Anderson will become the alias

(31:59):
that the one is most famous for it.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
But I'm saying in real life her name was Francesca.
In real life, her name was Francisca. I'm just trying
to keep it all straight.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, yeah, Francesca, Polish factory worker.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
People who are supporters of her fully dismissed the report.
They think that it is was rigged by the Hess
family because they didn't want to share the inheritance with her.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
What would be left to inherit that Bolsheviks didn't just
take it all.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
So they did, but they're after tenth because even the
Tsar's death was not like proven, you have to wait
ten years to claim like inheritance for like a I
don't know, a missing person whatever. And all the Soviet
property has been confiscated, but there are reports that there
are like secret Romanov bank accounts throughout Europe and they

(32:47):
do have you know, land and some money around Europe
that is out of the purview of the Bolsheviks. But
as we will discover, not nearly as much as people
want to believe.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, I feel like if they had like that swaths
of money, they would have like used it to no flee.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
They tried, it didn't work, okay, But again, if you
believe something, you're like, well, the you know, the Duke
of us doesn't want to share his inheritance young woman,
So they say that the report is rigged. The report
also has like skull and ear examination in comparisons to
prove that she's not anesthesia, but like that's all dubious
and like the fact that she is a Polish factory

(33:27):
worker is actually true. Yeah, so we're gonna focus on that.
Francisca's brother comes to visit her, and there's kind of
differing accounts to how he reacted. Some people are like, yeah,
he recognized that it was his sister, and other people
say that he just said that she had a strong
resemblance to her sister, and his family will later say

(33:51):
he did recognize her, but knew that her life would
be better if he didn't out her. That's like nice, sir,
He's just like what good is going to come of, Yes, fraud,
Like she's living in a castle with like rich people
supporting her. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
And I also like, you know, if you haven't seen
her in years, and she's gained some weight and she's
dressed really differently and got a haircut, maybe he's like,
you look like my sister.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
But she says she's in a yeah. And later this
is in the twenties, but in ten years, in nineteen
thirty eight, the Nazis will be like, is that your sister?
And then he's like, no, the Nazis are going to
put you in jail for fraud if I say you're
my sister, So no, you're not my sister.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
I'm always pro lying to not Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
So that's sort of what happens like in terms of
this report comes out, which is true, Yeah, but people
have their reasons for people have their reasons for denying it.
And this is not the end of her story. So
ten years have passed at this point, late twenties, Gleb
Botkin is leading the fights to get her inheritance that

(34:57):
he thinks she's owed. She's the hire lawyer. They're gonna
fight it out, and she comes on this whirlwind trip
to New York City in February nineteen twenty eight, and
it's paid for by Xenia Leeds, who's like a distantly
related Russian princess, and at this point she's going by
the name Anastasia Tchaikovsky. She has a press conference where

(35:18):
she says that she's coming to America to have her
jaw reset because it was broken by Bolshevik soldier and
it was still out of whack. And she's traded like
a celebrity in New York City and she's staying with
Xenia Leads and going to fancy parties, but she is
still mentally unstable. She acts pretty erratically. She's kicked out

(35:41):
of the Leeds mansion at a certain point, possibly because
Xenia is like, I actually don't think this is Anastasia anymore.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yeah, I mean the Anadelvie vibes.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeh, very anadelvie vibe.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
In terms of being a small time fake royalty, yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
And she checks into a hotel when she's kicked out
of the Leeds mansion, which is actually arranged by Rachmaninov,
the pianist who has beacing friends with her as Anna Anderson,
to avoid the press, and that's how she gets her
sort of most famous alias gotcha. She and her supporters
will always refer to her as Anastasia gotcha, But for clarity,

(36:19):
maybe we should I'll start calling her Anna, okay, just
because that's who she is. And you know, the mother
of the czar Grandmama's Anastasia dies in nineteen twenty nine
in Copenhagen, and the rest of the family gets together
for the funeral, and they all like jointly, are like,
can we all just make a statement right now that
that lady going around talking to the press saying she's

(36:41):
Anastesia is not our relative, she's an impostor. And they're like, yes,
So the entire family makes a statement gotcha, or like
the most powerful inner sanctum of the family. They're still
like distant cousins who will support her. Gleb Botkin replies
to the statement with an open letter accusing them all
of trying to swindle her out of her fortune.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
I love when family drama is just being aired out
in like the New York Times.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, she moves in nineteen twenty nine. She moves in
with a Park Avenue spinster named Annie Burr, Jennings who
it's kind of like the social like person just kind
of likes hosting someone famous. Yeah. I'm kind of also
picturing like the people at the beginning of Inside Lewyn
Davis who are just like hosting their this erratic person
just because they like that it makes them feel artsy.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
I feel like this is just like a twist on
Grey Gardens.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yes, yeah, but again, this is not like a mentally
well woman. Yeah, she kills a pet parakeet, she tantrums, apparently,
runs naked onto the roof, and in nineteen thirty she's
forcibly admitted to a sanitarium under the name Anna Anderson.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
I mean, I do feel for her. This again, this
wasn't her idea.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
No, she did continue it.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
No I know, but like again, like this was many
people told her this true, insisted it insisted.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
In true, She's declared mentally incompetent and sent back to
Germany to another institution. When she's brought back to Europe,
this is like another Again, this case, this situation is
over decades. Like I'm just like skating through big periods
of time because the story becomes your what.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
You might even say you were Russian. Listen I never
said all my jokes were gonna be good.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Uh no, it was good, thank you. But there are
various points over the decades where her story becomes like
more or less popular in the public imagination. When she
comes back to Germany, it does sort of bring more
attention to it because it's like she's back in Europe.
Her lawyers are still hard at work. It becomes the
longest running court case in German history for trying to

(38:55):
get her inheritance. Her lawyer is working pro bo and
I think genuinely seems to believe that she is Anastasia,
and he actually will go broke trying to find the
Romanov fortune quote unquote. And when I say that fortune,
I'm doing air quotes because her supporters claim that there's
this like Romanov deposit of twenty million gold rubles in

(39:17):
the Bank of England, when really kind of all there
is is like a few thousand marks in an East
Berlin bank. So we're gonna spend basically the next twenty
five years of Anna's life jumping between German towns, and
it's it's actually very sad. Quote to quote a source,

(39:38):
someone describes it as the drab, dependent life that Francisca
had hoped to escape, and like I said, there are
still some distant cousins who do support her. But then
it sort of becomes this inter family drama, like there's
the Cassel branch of the House of hess that does
support her, but mostly just as a fuck you because

(40:00):
they're in a feud with the Darmstad branch of the family,
so they kind of use her as a pawn in
this family feud of the Hesses. Frederick of Saxe Altenberg
helps her across the border during the Soviet occupation. She's
moved to the French occupation zone during World War Two.
After World War Two, she eventually settles in a former

(40:23):
army barracks in a small village at the edge of
the Black Forest and becomes like a reclose surrounded by cats,
kind of like a tourist attraction. The French play Anastasia
debuts in nineteen fifty four, the movie comes out nineteen
fifty six, ingrid Bergmann does in fact win an oscar,
and then the story, like because of the movie, has

(40:45):
another like little jolt of popularity. I found an article
from The New York Times in nineteen fifty eight which
described her as quote, wasted by tuberculosis, living in the
Black Forest in poverty, still suing in Hamburg civil court
for legal recognition, which she is never going to get
because the burden of proof is on her, and then

(41:06):
by the late fifties a lot of witnesses are dead.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
So if the sort of end of the German run
of her story is she's found unconscious one day in
her cottage, the cottage had become like very derelict, like horror,
like falling apart. She has an Irish wolf found in
sixty cats. When she's brought to the hospital, the prince
whose property it is begins cleaning up her wolf found

(41:33):
and cats are euthanized, and she is furious. And it's
at this point that Gleb Botkin says, come with me
to America. He's living in America at this point he says,
come to America.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
In Jersey running a small religious sect.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, but in nineteen sixty eight she comes with Gleb
Botkin to America and then right before her visa expires,
she meets she doesn't me, I mean she met him,
but she marries one of Gleb's friends and J. E.
Jack Manahan who's like a local eccentric at the University
of Virginia. He's a genealogist. Oh, he's a professor.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
There was I was about to say, like, is eccentric
a job you can have in a university?

Speaker 1 (42:14):
I mean, yes, he's also he was the son of
a dean. Okay, he's twenty years younger than her. Okay,
and the two of them just sort of live as
eccentrics in Charlottesville for a while. They have a house
on University Circle. It kind of becomes known for being
like derelict and dirty. But for a while, you know,

(42:34):
for like ten years, they're like kind of enjoying. I
think he kind of enjoys being like, I'm the czar's
son in law.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
I mean, quirky people deserve happiness too.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yes. In nineteen seventy eight, they are fined a thousand,
seven hundred and fifty dollars for quote rat Harborridge because
their house is so messy.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
I don't like that.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, they just have like multiple cats and two dozen dogs.
They just you know, are driving around with them and
then the city officials find them suffering from Rocky Mountain
spotted fever, and she's committed to the psychiatric ward at
Blue Ridge Hospital. But then Jack, her husband, pulls a

(43:18):
big fish and abducts her from the hospital and they're
found three days later living out of their car in Amherst, Virginia.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Oh, this is sad.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
And then you know she goes to at this point,
you know Anni Anderson Manahan, she goes by Anastasia Manahan
dies in nineteen eighty four at the hospital of Pneumonia.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Well, that's sad.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
So she dies in the eighties. To her dying day,
people still think that she is Anastasia. There is this author,
James Blair Lovell who writes a book called Anastasia the
Lost Princess, based on you know, research and interviews with Anna.
He met her in the seventies. The book was originally
published in nineteen ninety one. It's a very interesting book

(44:01):
that I actually have. I ordered this book. You can
still find it. It's out of print, but it's not expensive.
It's like five hundred pages. He seems like a very
smart guy, but he is entirely one hundred percent convinced
that she is Anastasia. He is like, after meeting with
her and speaking with her, this is Anastasia. He calls
her anesthesia throughout the book.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Has So I know his book came out in ninety one. Yes,
is he still alive?

Speaker 1 (44:28):
You know, I don't know. Oh, I know he is not.
And I have an interesting addendum to.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
That, because things have happened since nineteen ninety one that
I wonder if they would change his mind.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Well, that's very interesting, and I can I can tell
you the answer to that is no. Okay, because my
edition of the book was published a little later, and
there's a preface in my version of the book. Okay,
So what you are alluding to is in the early
nineties something becomes feasible, which is analyzing mitochondrial DNA. Yeah.

(45:00):
So the difference is like nuclear DNA is like I
think what most people think of, which is like the
DNA in the nucleus, but that disintegrates pretty rapidly. Yeah,
Mitochondrial DNA stays, stays around for hundreds of years. They
figure out that they can test that, and in nineteen
ninety four, scientists use a tissue sample of Anna Anderson's

(45:23):
recovered from a Virginia hospital, compare it with Romanov's and
Romanov descendants, and determine that she is not a Romanov, Right,
and then they later compare it with the DNA of
the great nephew of Francisca shan Kowshka, who is the
Polish factory worker, and wouldn't you know it, the DNA

(45:44):
is a match, right?

Speaker 2 (45:46):
And don't they also use DNA to confirm that they
have found the remains of the Czarina and all five
of their children.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
So they won't actually confirm that until two thousand and seven.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Right, But again, wouldn't that then really confirm that?

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Yes, okay? But so what so tell me about this preface.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
In the book the book, because the book comes after
this edition of the book that I have is after
the mitochondrial DNA, which is like, hey, she's one hundred
percent not of Romanov and she is this fat Polish
spector's lady. And the preface of the book is like
written by the publisher and it's like, so, by the way,
new information has come to light. But we talked to

(46:36):
you know, Jim Level. James Lovell is dead. We talked
to him. He died in nineteen ninety three, before the
year before the DNA testing. But before he died we
asked him, like, are you upset that you're going to
die before the DNA testing is done, and he goes,
I don't care if I don't see the DNA results.
I know in my heart no matter what the DNA says,

(46:56):
that she's Anastasia. And even the people who our true
believers are like, these DNA tests were not done perfectly.
These were contaminated samples. People who want to believe still believe. Okay,
even in the prologue it's like, so we've done these
DNA tests, but there are still questions.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Okay, that is information.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
So that is the sad long life of the woman,
the claimant known as Anna Anderson, the most famous Anastasia impostor,
the one who inspired the play, the movie, and then
later the animated movie.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Loosely, Oh yeah, I mean they got like the amnesia
from her and sort of this story. I feel like
Gleb kind of inspired the John Cusack character of like
her childhood friend then links up with her later and
it's not her idea.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
And there's something about like the lawsuit of like, oh
there's money in them hills if we can convince people
that she's Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah, elements elements of it, for sure, but like.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
She's, you know, the mentally ill woman, yeah, who lives
a pretty sad life, but you know, an adventurous life.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
In some ways, it gave her some like I don't know,
hope and identity and like fame.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
For a little bit.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yeah, And again like I don't know, it's all very
sad that like the family that had lost so much
was then maybe like torn apart by this thing. But again,
like kind of mostly a victimless crime, Like it's not
like she snookered them for all their worth.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
Especially because the closest relatives, Anastasia's grandmother was never convinced. Yeah,
and her uncle, her aunts and uncles, like the people
who were the most emotionally affected by this massacre never
were either comforted nor distraught by this. Yeah. I mean
I think they were at some point distraught by like

(49:00):
the press that it was like ugh, like yeah, that
might have still happened.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
But like I feel like they were most distraught by
the murders, and like you're going to be distraught by
that no matter what.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
So, as I mentioned, there are more than a dozen
Romanov claimants that come up in these decades. Copycats copycats
in nineteen sixty three, a woman named Eugenius Smith will
bring a manuscript to the publishers, Robert Speller and sons,
and it's a fascinating story. It's a manuscript about Anastasia

(49:35):
escaping from me Kathernberg, trying to make it to the west,
but then ultimately dying. And Smith says, so it's a
not a memoir because she died, Okay, she said that.
You know, in the book, anesthesia regained consciousness in the
seller was rescued by an unidentified woman who moved her
to a basement, nursed her back to health, and then

(49:56):
you know, was brought to the west with two men,
including one who was a soldier who had been stationed there.
And then they traveled by train and made it to Serbia.
And then the memoir ends and Eugenia Smith is like,
and unfortunately, then Anastasia died. Anastasia was a friend of mine,
a child's a friend of mine. She had told me
this story, so she had made it out. But then

(50:18):
she died. And the publishers are like, wow, quite write
the story. They do a polygraph test. It's nineteen sixty three.
They're doing what they can.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
Yeah, polygraphs are all the rage in the Cold.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
War, and they asked her, you know, were you a
childhood friend of Anastasia? And the polygraph is like lie,
lie lielight. But then they say are you Anastasia? And
the polygraph is like, you're telling the truth, and she
says yes. And she says yes. Well, she's like a
first dance.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
I round it, like, why would she say yes if
that was not THEO?

Speaker 1 (50:53):
She said, you caught me. I was trying to keep
it a secret. But it turns out I actually am Anastasia.
She didn't die after this, a fever or whatever. She
came to America. But I didn't want to say anything because,
you know, the truth is and this is actually a
very good point. The Bolsheviks killed the Romanovs, right, killed

(51:18):
all the people associated with the Romanovs, and even after
this family massacre killed a lot of Romanov associates still
in Russia. Sure, so if you were in Russia, you
were in danger. And if the Anastasia survived, she would
not want to be like, hey everyone, it's me Anastasia.
That would be a very dangerous thing. So the publishers
reach out to Gleb Bodkin, who this is the sixties.

(51:40):
He is at this point still a vocal, fervent supporter
of Anna Anderson, and he is like that lie detector
has a screw loose. You should not proceed with this
project because she's right here. She's right here. Anna Anderson
is Anastasia. The camp be too. They published it anyway.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
With the ending that she's alive, and well, she's alive.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
This is her.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Oh we got based on the polygraph?

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Well that this is it?

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Does it sell?

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Well? Oh? It does. Published in nineteen sixty three, it's
called the Autobiography of hih or Her Imperial Highness, the
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolevna of Russia. There's an excerpt in
Life magazine. They do handwriting analysis and comparison of facial features.
People you know, reject the claim. A few people who

(52:28):
knew Anastasia, obviously the glad vodkan Glub's sister Tatiana, also
rejects the claim, and another like Romanov princess. Unlike Anna Anderson,
there aren't a lot of contemporary friends of the real
Anastasia who correctly identify her. But the publishers are contacted

(52:49):
by this man, Michael Goliniwski, who is a who was
a former Polish Army officer who was an impost claiming
to be the Tsarevich Alexey, and he's like my sister,
and the two of them are like, we found each other.
And this is from that Anna Anderson biography that James

(53:10):
Lovell James Blair Lovell wrote. He wrote, quote, the two
impostors tearfully embraced and affirmed one another's authenticity.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Wow, so they really in this version of history, the
Bolsheviks did a really bad job killing that family.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
The kids got away.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
I mean, you know that's nice that they didn't kill
the two youngest members of the family. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
And you know that honestly is not like entirely implausible,
where you're like, these soldiers didn't want to kill these
this thirteen year old child. I mean.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
I would agree, except Alexey famously ahemophiliac.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
One shot, that kid's done. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you
even graze him with a bullets.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
I just think it's very funny that people who are like, yes,
Anna Anderson, this is Anna stay like these stupid impostors.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
I yeah, although a woman who is like covered in
scars and showed up in a mental institution after trying
to kill herself only a couple years after the supposed
killing and was only told about it and looks strikingly

(54:24):
like her to me, that is and is in Europe.
To me, that is much more believable as your long
lost friend than this random lady with a book in
America like forty years later. Yeah, like that, Like like,
I get what you're saying of being like it's weird

(54:44):
to out and out believe one impostor and then be like, huh, bullshit,
my bullshit detector.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
In terms of plausibility of the stories, I agree, and
Anderson much more plas.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Yeah, if you told me that my friend was murdered
and then someone claiming to be my friend showed up
two years later or seeming like they had just gone
through a terrible trauma both physically and mentally, I would
be like, oh my god, my friend is back. And
then if forty years after that someone showed up trying
to sell a book claiming to be my friend, I'd
be like, well, this is a person with a scam.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
I mean, it is funny that you say that, because like, Okay,
so this woman, Eugenius Smith, we know just based on paperwork.
She was born in Austria, Hungary January twenty fifth, eighteen
ninety nine, although later she would say that she was
born on June eighteenth, nineteen oh one, Anastasia's birthday. Yeah,
she like you know, emigrated from Austria, Hungary settled in Chicago.

(55:36):
She was claiming pre book to be the long lost
Anastasia and staying with prominent European affiliated nobles and wealthy
people in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Do you think that it was her plan all along
to reveal herself to be Anesthesia or did she actually
want to sell the book as friend of Anastesia.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
I kind of think she was always being like, I'm Anastasia,
but it's.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
A secret that's like very clever to have, like to
realize that, like part of the best ruse is to
not claim to be Anastesia, the way Anna Anderson didn't
claim to be Anastagia. She got told she was Anastesia.
So she was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell them
I'm a friend of Anaesthesia and I'm going to.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Make it their idea that I'm Ansthesia.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
It's pretty like you're right.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
And again she benefited from this when she moved to Chicago.
She was like the HouseGuest of like wealthy and prominent people,
and we like stories of her being like not a
great roommate and like throwing temper tantrums when she was
not permitted to use the family car.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Do you think that was because she thought that was
how Princess would act?

Speaker 1 (56:42):
Maybe? And I also kind of think it's possible this
woman believed it.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Oh really, I don't.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
I don't know, although this is where I think maybe
she didn't believe it. Anastasia's actual first cousin, Prince Rostolov Rostislav,
lived in the Chicago area. His ex wife here's the
story of Eugenius Myth going around and is like, let's
have her over for lunch. And she invites Eugenius Myth

(57:09):
over to lunch on multiple occasions and Smith always refuses.
She says she's too nervous.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Yeah, that's that compulsive liar thing.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
Yeah, where it's like, I don't know, if you actually
did believe you were in Anastasia, wouldn't you be like
my cousin, Prince Rostis love.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
She dies at ninety five, lives a long life, dies
at nineteen ninety seven. Okay, this is the most interesting
thing about Eugenius Myth and the reason I'm including her
because again there's a lot of impostors. But the reason
I like her is because in twenty eighteen, after all
the DNA evidence proves that spoiler alert Anastasia is in

(57:48):
fact accounted for, this local gallery owner in Albany, near
where she was buried, becomes obsessed with Eugenius Myth and
self publishes a book defending.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Her, defending her actions or defending her as the real
as the real Anastasia.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
So he again, this is after DNA evidence. She was
buried at the Holy Trinity, Russian Orthodox monastery near Albany,
like founded by exiled monks. I don't know why she
chose there because I don't think she was like whatever,
but it's like a Russian Orthodox church.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
She believed that she was Anastasia.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Yeah, buried under the name, you know, Anastasia. And this
man and I'm sorry to just out this, a man
who's still alive with an Instagram. His name is John
Feibel Parker, and he becomes obsessed with her. She had
later in life, like become a painter, okay, just like whatever,

(58:47):
painting memories of her childhood in Russia, and he buys
all of her paintings. He's an art dealer, and he
commissions a portrait of her as this is long after
she's dead. Commissions a portrait of her as Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Yeah, but like as a like adult to maybe middle
aged anti.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
This is the woman who painted it, smiling.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
It's like as she might have been had she lived
long enough to be like an adult Romanov princess.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah, it's it's Eugenia Smith present day as Anastasia. So
this is the facial analysis of Eugenia Smith and Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
I yeah, I mean they look like two ladies from
like the same part of the world.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Yeah. Freubel Parker is so convinced that Smith is Anastesia.
He points to the gravestone as evidence. He's like the
bird the gravestone says June eighteenth, nineteen oh one, Anastasia's birthday.
And you're like, that's can put whatever you want, just
a gravestone. And he also says comparing the photographs is

(59:53):
his like main evidence. He's like, I did forensic analysis
on these photographs and it's the same person.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
I mean they do look similar, but like in the
same way that like Katie Perry looks like Jean.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Benet and now he does, like his Instagram has just
like AI portraits of Anastasia reading his own book about Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Oh, this is sad.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Enthralled with the story of her life.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
So weird.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
So but that's just to say that, like people who
want to believe it, believe it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Yeah, okay, random conspiracy to be into, but I guess
it's not hurting anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
You had mentioned like the Anna Anderson copycats. So the
main copycat that you know, the only other case that
we're going to talk about is this woman named Marga
Boots who claimed to be Olga the oldest daughter. Okay,
which again to me is like very like George is
my favorite Beatle. Yeah, because not everyone has to be Anastasia.

(01:00:50):
But the real secret answer there's another woman who I
can't even get into, named Susannah de Groff, who claims
to be the secret fifth daughter.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Oh shut up that actually.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
This Alreada had another daughter.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
I mean that's just like fan fiction.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
I mean, yeah, there actually is an account Alexandra lost
a baby between because she had these four daughters and
we're like, we need a son. God. Yeah, and so
like the story is like, we know historically that it's
possible that she had lost a pregnancy in between children
four and five, but it's like, what if she did
have a baby and it was another girl and they

(01:01:27):
were just like gave it to me exactly. Okay, So
that's the secret story.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
I mean again, like that's a good idea for a book.
It's a good idea for her, not a good idea
for a fake identity.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Susanna Katerina de Graf missing princess. But this woman, Marga Boots,
claiming to be Olga, goes public when Anna Anderson is
big news. When Anna Anderson is taking her case to
the Hamburg courts, Boots speaks up and is like, I
never wanted to speak up. I always wanted to be
quiet about this, but I saw my sister Anastasia executed.

(01:02:01):
This is an impostor. I'm like willing to go to
court to unmask her. The two of them never met,
but she said in an interview quoted I found this
interview cited by the Saint Petersburg Times in February twelfth,
nineteen sixty quote. Now I have decided to break my
silence because I do not want the name of my
family Romanov smeared by a mystifier whom the Hamburburg Court

(01:02:25):
is apparently taking a bit too seriously.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
So and did she have any other like, did she
take her story anywhere else?

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Yeah? I mean she Her claim is actually supported by
Prince Sigismund of Prussia, who actually introduced her to Nikolaus,
the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, who gave this woman financial
support until he died. You know, Prince Sigismund is convinced,
so are a few other random nobles, that she is Olga.

(01:02:53):
But for the record, Prince Sigismund of Prussia also supported
Anna Anderson's claim, which kind of makes him hard to
buys a witness because she's like, that's definitely not my sister. Yeah,
it's like you're going to believe both of them. But
she has, you know, a very similar story, which is
like a Cossack soldier had knocked her unconscious, pretended she

(01:03:14):
was dead, and replaced her corpse with a young local woman,
and then she was brought to Germany and married a
German officer in nineteen twenty six, so don't look into that,
and then like lived in Lake Cuomo Como under the
radar was and like supported by a few Romanov relatives,
which like, if you're going to do this, con that's

(01:03:35):
the way to do it. Yeah, lived under the radar.
She signed a contract to write her memoirs in Italy,
but they were never published. She died in nineteen seventy six,
but for some reason, in twenty eleven her memoirs were
published in Spain. And she's random, you know. After she died,
she was buried under the name Olga Ogle Nicolinna. You

(01:03:58):
can put anything on a grapestone. Know who she actually was, Yeah,
I think just marg Da Boots.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Oh right, you said that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
Sorry, I think that's the identity that she had been
living secretly, because she claims that when she came to Germany,
you know, and married this German officer, that she met
the Kaiser himself and he offered her financial support, but
he told her apparently, don't tell anyone who you are
for protection of your own life.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
But she wasn't because we know that all the Romanovs.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
So let's get into that. In nineteen seventy nine, this
geologist and amateur investigator named Alexander Evdenen discovers a burial
site outside of Katrinberg yea, and Alexander Avdenen is from
me Katrinberg, and so he kind of like the story
of the Romanov murder is sort of like in the

(01:04:51):
soil around him. He's been fascinated by it since he
was a child, and he's just an amateur investigator. And
he figures out where the bodies were buried, because again,
this was such a messy operation that this is why
there was so much information. What we know now is
that there was this like who ordered this shooting, we
don't know, but they were panicking that the Bolsheviks were

(01:05:13):
panicking because the White Army was coming. They were like,
we can't have the Romanovs still alive. Killed them all.
They brought the bodies to like a mine an abandoned
mine shaft and dumped them and then realized the abandoned
mind shaft was too shallow, took them out, doused their
bodies in acid to try to disguise them, and then
buried them in shallow graves.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
Horrible, horrible bad.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
Alexander abdon and figures this out. He like even finds
in the mind shaft like little piece like relics, like
I don't know jewelry or like little pieces of clothing
things that were from them. So he finds it in
nineteen seventy nine. But the thing is it's Soviet Russia
right now, yes, and the Soviets are not big fans

(01:05:56):
of the czars, right and he very intelligently, I think,
keeps his mouth shut. Yes, So he does not tell
people for ten years. Okay, literally, in nineteen eighty nine,
during like glass knot like the when like Soviet Russia's
like we're opening, you know, to the world. Nineteen eighty nine,

(01:06:17):
he tells people and there's actually professional exhumation and they
find nine bodies. So they find that's the five family members.
They find Nicholas, the Tsarina, three children, and four servants. Okay,
so I'm you don't have to do the math. You're
missing two children, right, they had five children. Well, that's interesting.

(01:06:41):
Two children are missing. Maybe in his Asia got away?
Are they? What's the jender breakdown on the kids? We're
missing one daughter and the son. Okay, maybe the you know,
Anastasian Alexei got away. Maybe Olga and Alexi got away.
Maybe Murray who knows? The bodies are exhumed the ones
they do find and because mitochondrial DNA is matrilineal, if

(01:07:04):
you know, the British royal family is patrilineal, so like
Queen Elizabeth became queen because her father was king, and
it's like by your father. But since mitochondrial DNA is matrilineal,
they actually test Prince Philip, the late husband of Queen
Elizabeth the second because he is a matrilineal descendant of Alexandra.

(01:07:27):
She is Alexandra's great nephew Okay Alexandrazarina this Arena Okay,
one of her siblings. He's the grandchild of Okay, and
so they use his DNA and they identify that the
five family members, the four servants all accounted for five
family members are in fact Romanov's, but we are missing

(01:07:49):
one of the daughters and the prince. Mystery. So now
for ten years, more than ten years, for like fifteen years,
there's the mystery of like, well, maybe Annastasa did get away,
even though we're they've tested the DNA of Anna Anderson
like the most likely Cohn and they're like the listener.
And then amateur investigators in two thousand and seven sort

(01:08:12):
of resume the dig and realized that there was like
an area about ninety meters away that hadn't been examined.
And they find two more bodies, and they identify Alexey
and one of the other bodies as a young woman,
and actually scientists believe that it's most likely Maria, which
means that they had found Anastasia all along. Okay, and

(01:08:32):
that's the truth of the story, and so hoax.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Hand for where are they now buried?

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Yeah, they are buried in the Saint Catharine Chapel of
the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. I think
there was a move to make some of them saints
like Russian Orthodox murders, but I don't think that has happened,
to the best of my acknowledge. I think they're like
I don't mean to reveal my ignorance of the Russian

(01:08:59):
ordox Church, but like Junior sat yes.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
I have no opinion on the sainthood of Russian Orthodoxy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Yeah, but yes, they were buried, They are all accounted for.
None of these people are Anastasia.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
But you know, we got a real good movie out
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
I like that too.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
I haven't seen the old one, but the animated.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
One and a Broadway music. Ho.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
Yeah, but I've heard that the Broadway musical like takes
out all the fun stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Lizzie. It's so disappointing, I know. Can I tell you
what I hated about it? Please respute not in it.
I know they are like bart Bartok not in it.
Dark of the Night. Cut that song. I love that
rat song. The villain is a the son of one
of the Bolshevik soldiers who executed them. Fine, you're doing

(01:09:46):
like a grounded version. Can I tell you what the
villain's name is. His name is Gleb And I'm like, okay,
Gleb was whatever involved and that's like a real Russian name.
But she's like, Gleb, we can't do this, and I'm
like that it's not a name. You can say that
way now it does say like Victor, Yeah, sure much better.

(01:10:07):
Did not like it. Also, it was a set. One
of my pet peeves like a Broadway musical is. It
was a set that like really relied on the screens.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
I don't like a screen set.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
And you're like, this is supposed to be Russia in
the twentieth century Paris. Don't give me a screen set,
Dearravn Hansen. Fine, we're all about TikToker. Yeah, didn't like
a screen set, didn't like a villain named Glib. I'm
going to do my hot take before this episode ends
and say I am not a fan of authoritarian monarchy.

(01:10:42):
I don't think that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
No, stars, that was never our I just deal.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
I just want to be very clear. I do not
think that czars should be in charge of everything. I
also think, because two things can be true at once,
you shouldn't murder children.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
No, and I do love hearing about out mostly from
the Noble Blood episode about how hard it was to
kill Resputen. It is very fun, Dana. If you were
to make a movie about any version of the Anastasia story,
which version of it, you know what I mean, fictional Antesia,

(01:11:17):
real Anastasia, or like Anna Anderson or like what Anthesia
movie are you making? And who are you casting his
Anasthesia okay, Marie or the protagonist?

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
My black List script now is Anna Anderson married to
this eccentric professor in Virginia doing the big fish break
out of the hospital, and it's in the three days
before they're found with flashbacks. Amazing, So it's an Anna
true Anna Anderson story movie about this crazy older woman
her husband twenty years younger than her. Does she believe it?

(01:11:51):
Does he believe it? Are they both losing their minds?
They're on their run Bonnie and Clyde style. Yeah, what's
your movie? But you can write that one.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
I would totally write that with you. I think it's
like Emma Stone pulling off the scam of a lifetime.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
Yeah, yes, Emma Stone as like a knowing Anastasia. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
I think it's Emma Stone just like seizing the day
of just being you know what I.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Mean, like the favorite style.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
Yeah, of just of like noticing that she looks like
this lady and just being like, I gotta get out
of my life in Poland. I'm gonna be a princess.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
I mean, I don't blame her. A life is a
widowed Polish factory worker who was severely injured and probably
suffered brain injury from a factory explosion, whose husband died
in World War One. He's a bad situation, and I
do not blame anyone for coming up with a more
exciting version of your life. But there was no Romanov

(01:12:52):
fortune to even inherit in the end.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Yeah, that's the twist ending Lizzie.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
Where can the good people find?

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
You can find us at Hooks Thepodcast on Instagram. That's
also a great place to check to find out more
about the future of this podcast, which we'll hopefully just
continue on this feed after season one ends in like
three or four episodes, a not too many episodes left

(01:13:19):
on season one.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
Three more episodes, three more.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
Episodes, and then there will be a break of indeterminate length,
and then we will be back with season two, hopefully
on this feed, but if if not, anyway all of
the updates will come, I will post about on the Instagram,
so that will be the first place to learn about it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
And if you want to email us, you can email
us at Hoaxthpodcast at gmail dot com. You can also
follow me on social media at Danish schwartz with three
z's at the end and on TikTok Danish Swartz, also
with three z's at the end. Please order the book
The Arcane Arts if you are in Los Angeles, Chicago,
New York, or Phoenix, come out. I'm very excited for

(01:14:02):
the Phoenix event on Monday, June first, because we are
in conversation with Diana Gabaldon, who wrote the l Anderbooks,
and I'm very excited to talk to her about that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
I won't be there, but you guys can talk to
Diana Gabaldon, who is actually much cooler than I am, so.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
That you might be at the LA one oh sure,
May nine, Tuesday, May nineteenth, Maybe right? Maybe? All right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
Thanks for listening, Please holks responsibly.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
Bye.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
Pax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts are
Danish Sports and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt
Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L. K
Ali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme
music was composed by Lane Montgomery. For more podcasts from
iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts for

(01:15:01):
wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.